In a particularly memorable rant on his radio show, during which he derides President Barack Obama as “sociopathic,” Beck ripped the “rat bastards” in the media who uncritically reported on Obamacare’s 7 million enrollees.

“This is complete bogus. This is a complete bogus fairy tale. This is completely made up. This is nonsensical,” Beck said in a clip pulled by Right Wing Watch. “The emperor has no clothes. And everyone in the press, you rat bastards, every single one of you know what he’s saying isn’t true. You know it. You know it.”

Keeping in mind that I’m not a trained professional, I’d say that Glenn is working on the denial/anger stage of his grief. Since compromise isn’t in his wingnut vocabulary, I assume the bargaining phase will be short. His depression will be deep, and acceptance will probably come sometime after the 2020 election.

Also, too: I knew someone who named their dog “Rat Bastard”. It’s a great epithet.

I’m curious as to the etymology of the term “rat bastard.” Which is the object and which is the modifier?

PS: If you want decent WiFi in an airport, locate a place outside of an American Airlines Admirals Club. Their free signal leaks out and you can snake in on it and it’s reliably strong. Gate D-15 at Miami International works great.

“This is complete bogus. This is a complete bogus fairy tale. This is completely made up. This is nonsensical,” Beck said in a clip pulled by Right Wing Watch. “The emperor has no clothes. And everyone in the press, you rat bastards, every single one of you know what he’s saying isn’t true. You know it. You know it.”

Look how the GOP embraced Social security from the Eisenhower admin until St. Reagan. If ACA works at all they will accept it . . . for now . . . and the wingnuts will find ways to create a fake crisis to attack it with around 2048 or so. Like SS they may get lucky & damage it enough to reduce people belief in its success and some time around 2060 David Brooks III will explain to us how we just need to privatize ACA, it was a noble experiment that failed.

@JPL: Their assumption is tha tin the long run its more expensive, and makes more people happy, to give people full access to US healthcare. Sure the ER is expensive and only stabilizes people but treating some poor person for cancer? Man, that would really cost us. Better to let them die early and in debt and pain than to keep another useless mouth alive.

I see, the entire panel Morning Joe believes the Court ruled yesterday that all donations from now on must go to campaigns and that they must be transparent. Since that did not happen, the whole conversation was pointless.

@MattF: No, I think it is not a pick one of the two situation. The conservatives in this country have had a hundred years to get behind some type of national healthcare plan. Everytime that one was proposed and working its way through Congress, the conservatives opposed it. Sometimes they killed it, sometimes they did not have the votes and then spent the next fifty years working to kill it, but conservatives in this country think healthcare is just another good, and if you don’t have access to good healthcare, then it is the same public policy problem of you not having access to a good hamburger — a non-problem.

Your premise is flawed. The GOP ain’t what it used to be. There are no pragmatists left in the flock, only firebrands and followers. They backed themselves into a corner that they won’t be able to come out of anytime soon.

The fact that they were dumb enough to brand the ACA “Obamacare” tells you everything you need to know. They are fixated on shortsighted victories and have lost the war.

Can you imagine if they had branded Social Security “Democrat Security” back then? Because they’re stupid enough to do it now.

@Richard Mayhew: I agree that it’s hard to disentangle partisan and ideological motives. However, Obamacare is the conservative alternative to a single-payer system. In addition, I’m persuaded that animus toward Obama is the main force behind the sort of winger crazy-talk that we get from Beck. I just don’t see, otherwise, how you get from healthcare to the sort of enraged ranting that we get from the right wing.

I have to confess some affection for Beck, because unlike Rush and Coulter, he’s not just a mercenary. That SOB is really crazy. Like barking at the moon crazy. You never know what he’ll do or say next. I he weren’t a teetotalling Mormon, I’d like to party with that guy.

@EconWatcher: Beck is the only winger I can listen to because he’s obviously nuts. I listen to one of his rants and I’m simply floored that any of his audience can follow because he’s using shorthand. Some of the consipiracies I have heard of, but most I haven’t. I guess the audience is better versed, but you have to be dedicated to get to that point.

I like “rat bastard” — or better yet, “miserable rat bastard” — but I prefer “son of a bitch bastard” myself. With a thick Brooklyn accent. One of the few things I enjoyed about growing up on the set of Saturday Night Fever (yes, they really were that stupid).

I listen to one of his rants and I’m simply floored that any of his audience can follow because he’s using shorthand.

Though I don’t doubt Beck’s audience is crazier than a sprayed roach (as is Beck himself), that shorthand phenomenon is pretty common across the ideological spectrum. I’ve often wanted to read the mister some interesting point here at BJ and found I had to supply much back story before it would be understandable to someone who isn’t familiar with the tropes in which we traffic.

[C]onservatives in this country think healthcare is just another good, and if you don’t have access to good healthcare, then it is the same public policy problem of you not having access to a good hamburger — a non-problem.

Even worse, they consider it a luxury. If you’re getting healthcare that you can’t afford then you’re a moocher! Just like if you’re eating when you can’t afford it. Some of them will not complain publicly if the poor are given gruel, but anything more is a luxury and they wail like toddlers about that.

Remember when Wold Blitzer asked “What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? Are you saying society should just let him die?” and all those Teahadi fucks yelled “Yeah!” and clapped. A significant chunk of those assholes think that the way to cut our current healthcare costs is to bar the emergency room doors to the indigent. Conservatism is all about self-righteously punching down.

Charles Koch has an op-ed in today’s WSJ (basic content: “Stop attacking me! That’s mean!”). The funny part is the graphic that some nameless (and quite possibly soon to be jobless) soul in the WSJ production office put in. It’s the old Daily Kos masthead graphic. Seriously.

@Karen in GA: “Son of a bitch bastard” is used by George Burns in the movie The Sunshine Boys. His character prefaces it by asking Richard Benjamin how old he is, and looking around to make sure his grandkids aren’t home yet.

Beck recently made a public statement to the effect that he said a lot of crazy shit while on FOX and he’s bothered now by how seriously people took it and how crazy politics has come, and he regrets being a main cause of that.

And now he’s saying crazy inflammatory shit again.

I’m guessing ‘grifters gotta grift’, but there’s still room for him being a delusional paranoid, because they do have cycles.

After a few minutes of thought, I find this very encouraging. The more Republicans hitch their train to delusions that Obamacare isn’t working and all the good stuff you hear is lies, the more they will rant against an increasingly popular program. Republican candidates will directly tell voters that they plan to take away those voters’ health insurance. While I see the vagueness of people knowing what they have and why keeping this from being a totally disastrous tactic, it’s always great to know that your opponent’s primary strategy is to punch himself in the face.

I have to confess some affection for Beck, because unlike Rush and Coulter, he’s not just a mercenary. That SOB is really crazy. Like barking at the moon crazy. You never know what he’ll do or say next. I he weren’t a teetotalling Mormon, I’d like to party with that guy.

I think dinner with Beck would be great fun and entertaining companionship, right up to the point where he said something so outrageously sociopathic that it would be my humanitarian duty to punch him out, smashing his nose and jaw.

In a particularly memorable rant on his radio show, during which he derides President Barack Obama as “sociopathic,” Beck ripped the “rat bastards” in the media who uncritically reported on Obamacare’s 7 million enrollees.

Nevertheless, there’s an increasing recent trend for more and more airports to provide it free (instead of having to pay exhorbitant fees for shitty WiFi to “Boingo” which I never had anything urgent enough to be willing to do). In some airports, the free wifi is sponsored, and so you have to patiently wait for a 15 second Starbucks ad to play before you’re on. For blog-browsing,
airport wi-fi is plenty good enough – you just have to keep in mind this simply isn’t the time and place to indulge quality streaming video. But the free wi-fi sure beats watching the free CNN on the monitors above gate seating areas.

Crimes? Since when it punching hippies a crime? Isn’t it like community service?

A Marine was taking college classes between his deployments to Afghanistan.

One of his courses had a professor that was an atheist and a member of the ACLU. One day the professor shocked everyone by walking into class, looking up and stating “God, if you are real, I want you to come down and knock me off this platform, I will give you 15 minutes.

Several minutes tick by in silence, when the 15 min. time almost expired the Marine gets up from his seat, approaches the professor and shot him in the face with his 9mm. Then the Marine went back to his seat.

A female student cried out “Oh my God! You killed him! Why?”

The Marine said, “God was busy protecting America’s military who are out protecting your right to say stupid shit like that, so he sent me to fill in.”

The female responded “What do you mean ‘protecting his rights’? You just killed him for something he said! That’s the exact opposite of protecting his rights!”

The Marine eyed her coldly for a few seconds. “You must be a liberal …. and probably a feminist”. Then he shot her in the face too.

By now, people were screaming and fleeing the hall in a panic. “Shooter on Campus! Shooter on Campus!”. Only a few students remained frozen to their seats.

The Marine thanked them for supporting his second amendment rights and then turned on the panicking remainder. “You Liberal Fascists! I won’t let you label THIS Marine a ‘deranged shooter’ and use me as a pawn in your plot to disarm America.”. He shot and killed them all.

Then he saw the police outside and realized he had to correct the misunderstanding. He grabbed his cell phone and called President Cruz. “I’m not a crazy shooter. I’m a Marine and I’m only killing liberals”. President Cruz thanked him for his service and told the police to go home. Then he gave the Marine the Medal of Honor.

@cmorenc:
Ugh. Palin is a leather-skinned mummy with hate eyes and an abrasive personality. That does not sound appealing. And while it admittedly wouldn’t matter in a hot tub, she dresses like she’s cheap. Not like she likes sex, or likes showing off, but like bidding starts at five cents. I am constantly baffled that she’s considered hot by so many people.

Charles Koch has an op-ed in today’s WSJ (basic content: “Stop attacking me! That’s mean!”). The funny part is the graphic that some nameless (and quite possibly soon to be jobless) soul in the WSJ production office put in. It’s the old Daily Kos masthead graphic. Seriously.

It’s a royalty-free stock image you can purchase. I imagine someone at (or designing for) Daily Kos found it in an image library and paid for the use of it.

Ugh. Palin is a leather-skinned mummy with hate eyes and an abrasive personality. That does not sound appealing.

Palin’s not remotely my cup of tea either, but OTOH I was respondng to EconWatcher’s fetish for drinks with Beck or a date with Nancy Grace, and…you know, just helping him out thinking up his next perverse fantasy. Some people are into the M of S&M, you know.

On lower Broadway between Houston and Canal, there is a very hip clothing store called “Yellow Rat Bastard.” I’ve always really liked the phrase as potential insult, but I never thought it could be a big fashion-crowd draw, but it seemed to be doing pretty well.

Oh, well, wiki has more:

Yellow Rat Bastard is the flagship establishment in a chain of New York City retail clothing stores owned by Henry Ishay. It specializes in “hip-hop-and alternative-style clothing and shoes.”

***

History

Yellow Rat Barstard (YRB), the word YRB was originally developed by Marc Ecko, a former store manager and the space designer of the NYC store. The idea for the store came from a Frank Miller comic book called “Sin City”; it had an issue entitled “That Yellow Bastard”.
Controversy

In 2008, the store, the related chain and owner Ishay were cited for labor law violations by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and entered into $1.4 million settlement paying back wages to more than a thousand employees.[1][2]

While I’m getting things off my chest, if I weren’t happily married, I’d like to date Nancy Grace. Sure, she’s demonically evil. But doesn’t that make you a little…curious?

Um … no?

Seriously, I don’t know much about this Nancy Grace person, but if she comes to your mind when you’re thinking about Beck, that can’t be a good thing. On the plus side, I can picture you running rings around them without their having even the barest idea.

ER’s were barred to the indigent, in about half the states, until Reagan signed a Federal law mandating ER’s had to take all comers.

Great social policy. Mandate spending by hospitals, provide no funds to cover it. Anything but put some tax money behind it. But at least Reagan pretended not to want poor people to die needlessly.

But that just shows how much the Republican party has changed. Wolf Blitzer’s audience, tea partiers all, actively wanted people without insurance to die, because they’re poor and even though they could be saved.

Reagan had a shred of (misplaced) decency. Current GOP, not. That’s the point that your factoid about Reagan ignores. It also ignores that, developing from the unsatisfactory “unfunded mandate” on hospitals, conservatives moved on to a different solution, the “individual mandate” that would require everyone to get insurance, now called “Obamacare.” Which conservatives hate. Sick, sick people.

@David in NY:
I wish to point out that all conservatives liked was the individual mandate. They didn’t even like an employer mandate. They do and always have hated the giant pile of insurance company regulations required to make it work. It is always important to remember this, and that Romneycare was a Democratic bill Romney vetoed, then had his veto overridden.

You can be bat-shit crazy and a grifter, Glenn Beck is living proof of that. Yes, he is seriously unbalanced, but he knows what he is saying and doing most of the time and he certainly knows how to take his rube audience for every penny he can.

Is Beck’s entire schtick just that, the persona of a shock jock that he wears for work (if you can call this “work”, of course) or is it the real Glenn Beck?

I’m sure that many of his followers are authentically hateful fucktards who buy into the schtick and think it’s not an act., but I’m sure there are more than a few who follow him simply for the pure entertainment value of him screaming like a three year old who has been told “no” about another Disney video or pulling the cat’s tail or whatever.

Limbaugh often claims that he’s just an “entertainer” and it’s all an act, but I don’t buy that in his case. He seems to be a real racist asshole whose departure from this mortal coil would result in a substantial improvement in the polity. But Beck seems more like a guy who has adopted this persona simply to make a buck…he’s been in the shock jock bidness too long.

@Villago Delenda Est:
Limbaugh is a comedian in the sense that his audience believes he’s humorously stating and very slightly exaggerating the truth. Beck’s audience has, in poll after poll, made it clear that they think he’s giving them the truth no one else is smart enough to see. They both know how their audience reacts, so they are absolutely culpable and Limbaugh’s ‘I’m a comedian’ excuse holds no water. They are knowingly influencing crazy and hateful people to be even more crazy and hateful, no matter what label they use for that.

However, as for their personalities, I think it’s not as clear-cut. I read an article by Limbaugh’s niece that claims that he is both an obsessive showman who loves to troll and exaggerate to be the center of attention, and also a complete asshole. Beck has a clear record as a grifter, and also a record that suggests (without confirming) mental illness.

Re airport wi-fi – I didn’t try it when I was there a couple weeks ago, but I am willing to bet (pun intended) that Newark airport has really good wi-fi now that all the cas1n0s are advertising online gambling on the airport billboards.

Why is it that these wingers get so enraged by the possibility that more people now have health insurance that actually covers things? Is it the subsidy? Do they really believe that the life and value of a healthy worker is less than the partial cost of health insurance? Or are they just mad because their version of government always seems more incompetent that the Democrats’.

Beck strikes me as the kind of person who will someday actually commit suicide on the air. He really is howling at the moon crazier than hell. There are times when I actually feel sorry for him because I just get no joy out of watching a crazy person on television. It just seems sad to me that you can’t send somebody in with Thorazine or something and quietly take him away where he will not be a threat to himself or anybody else.